Posts by Marian Krawczyk

A new approach to suffering in life-limiting illness: Total pain, the brain-gut axis, and the human microbiome

Published on: May 1, 2019 Author: Marian Krawczyk Leave a comment

People with life-limiting illnesses report exceptionally high rates of psychosocial and existential suffering in conjunction with bodily pain. Cicely Saunders famously conceptualized this cumulative distress as ‘total pain’. As you may already know, we’re pretty interested in total pain around here. Professor David Clark has written extensively about it (see here for an overview), and… Continue reading →

In touch with the dead

Published on: July 23, 2018 Author: Marian Krawczyk Leave a comment

One of the most fundamental ways we show love and connection is through touch. This behaviour is so central to our understanding of what it means to be in relationship with another person that visual representations of touch have become one of the most common visual forms of ‘shorthand’ to indicate compassionate caring, including at… Continue reading →

Glasgow End of Life Studies ‘Talk & Tea’: A recap of our Community Event

The Glasgow End of Life Studies Group hosted a very lively and well-attended ‘Talk & Tea’ on March 22nd. The event showcased a range of research and initiatives related to later and end of life, and brought together a diverse group of community members. We organized the event to highlight how our work takes place… Continue reading →

An invitation to an end of life community event in Dumfries, Scotland

Published on: March 9, 2018 Author: Marian Krawczyk Leave a comment

This invitation stems from meeting Margaret Dobie, who I first got to know last fall, shortly after I arrived in Dumfries to join the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group. Margaret has attended many of the Group’s community events in Dumfries and Galloway over the last two years, and when I wrote my first post… Continue reading →

Dr Marian Krawczyk on her new research role at the University of Glasgow

Published on: September 21, 2017 Author: Marian Krawczyk Leave a comment

I have always been fascinated by hospitals. They are spaces where some of the most intense and vulnerable moments of our lives happen, and for many of us, it is also be where we will spend our very last days of life and die. Given the importance of the hospital in our final illness trajectories,… Continue reading →

Understanding hospital palliative care as an affective economy

If, like me, you are a citizen of the global North, the statistical probability is that you–after a protracted illness–will spend your last days and die in an acute-care hospital. Increasingly, a good death in these institutions calls for a specific form of medical expertise–palliative care. As a medical anthropologist, one of my main research… Continue reading →